How To Reform Mechanics Into Biology
by Jay Gee Three
Summary: Bladerunner 5; the book of the film of the book - Do Androids Dream? Since the film is so different from the original novel, this is the novelisation of the film. Rachel gave a very slight smile. 'Don't smile. I wouldn't come after you. But somebody would. Bryant wants you dead. Maybe Tyrell wants it. You can be replaced, he has the blueprints and you are the proof of concept.


Chapter 12

Deckard held the bottle of Tsing Tao, nestling it in the crook of his arm like he was cradling a baby. He looked up 'Olmec' at where he had shot Zhora. People were crowded around the police cordon. Bryant was right, thought Deckard, I could do with a ride home. He turned to walk back up the Avenue to get that ride in a patrol car. As he did so he saw a face through the teeming crowds, looking directly at him. The instant that the bright oval of the face saw him looking in her direction she turned and walked swiftly away.

It was Rachael Tyrell!

Deckard hurried after her. He half walked, part ran and part fought his way through the crowd. He got past the sight-seers around Zhora's shooting. He couldn't see her now. Where was she? He hurried on, looking around him as he did so.

What was he going to do when he found her? Shoot her too? As Bryant had instructed. Suddenly he felt a huge shove in his back, that sent him half-stumbling along the sidewalk. He turned, and was faced by the substantial frame of Leon Polokov.

'Leon,' he greeted him as though he were an old friend, 'You're here! I've been looking for you!' Deckard looked past Leon's shoulder. Perhaps he could get the attention of the police cordon. But Leon must have followed and waited until they were a sufficient distance away before confronting him. Leon shoved him firmly in the chest.

'How long have I got?' he demanded.

'See Tyrell.'

'I've tried that. Now I'm asking you.'

'He knows. I don't.'

Leon grabbed him by the sleeves of his overcoat and spun him round and shoved him hard into the frontage of a building that had once been another Encounter Bar, and now stood semi-derelict. As he was spun round Deckard reached into his jacket and drew out his gun. He knew he had one chance to shoot Leon. He turned and raised the gun in one deft movement. Before he was half-facing him though he felt a hard blow delivered by Leon, before he even saw him raise his fist. It felt like a blow from a sledgehammer that hit his wrist and the gun spun out of his hand and clattered in the road and skidded away.

'You all have five years. That's all I know.' Deckard said. 'If you know your incept date, you can do the arithmetic yourself.' After all, he thought to himself, they're all based on glorified calculating machines.

'So. I've nothing to lose - and you lose _everything_.' Leon grabbed Deckard and spun him around again. He pushed him hard up against a city utility vehicle parked by the kerb. Leon pointed a leather-gloved hand in Deckard's face. 'Whatever I have left, even if it is only one hour, it will be more than you have left to live,' he said, his pointing hand became a fist as he drew his arm back to punch him. Deckard was able to get his face out of the way before the blow came crashing in. Polokov's punch dented the sturdy metal casing of the utility vehicle. He shook his hand but otherwise he showed no sign of pain.

'Numb,' was all he said, dully.

As Deckard avoided the punch he looked around to see where his gun had landed, trying to see its bluish gun-metal glint in the coloured neon and LED lights of the Avenue. The thought flashed into his mind that Rachael was bait for a trap that he'd run straight into, and Leon was the booby-trap. No sooner had the thought formed in his mind than he felt something like an electricity bolt hit him in the kidneys. Leon was on him in an instant, and had punched him in the back. Deckard turned and punched Polokov with all the physical strength he had. All that seemed to do was enrage the Replicant and to give himself a spasm of sharp pain that ran up the length of his arm, probably breaking a few bones in his own hand.

What is pain? Deckard thought in a moment of philosophic clarity, and what difference will a few broken bones make when I'm being examined on the mortuary slab with my organs pummelled to mash and my spine ripped out.

Leon got hold of Deckard's lapels and lifted him, then half spun and half-threw him into a narrow street off the main drag.

The large Replicant bore swiftly down on Deckard, who tried to get up but was feeling the effects of this beating and his earlier meeting with Zohra.

'Life is pain, and pain is fearful, therefore life is fearful,' Leon snarled this sarcastic philosophical homily, then he grabbed Deckard by the collar and waistband and picked him up bodily and threw him again. Deckard landed on the windshield of an old restoration job. Or, he landed _in_ the windshield, then slid down onto the car's hood. The reinforced glass had partly shattered with the force of the impact and as Leon leant over to pick him off the car, the indentation of Decker's torso was left in the bent-in glass.

'C'mon and get what you dish out. But I won't shoot you in the back, the way you shot Zhora. I'll be looking straight into your eyes as you die.' Deckard looked for any way he could get past and run - if he could find the strength to still run. He felt Polokov's designed-in strength in the way he was being thrown about. Like a cat playing with its catch.

'Please...,' Deckard started to say.

Leon smacked him firmly across the face.

'No pleas,' Polokov said. 'You'll get no more mercy than you give.' And he smacked him hard across the face again, sending Deckard's head lolling in the other direction.

'Don't you pass out on me,' Leon said. He shook Deckard hard. 'Don't you dare pass out on me, I want you to feel the pain.' Leon smacked him across the face again. Deckard felt another blow, and then a hard constriction on his throat. Leon was throttling him. Deckard used what little strength that he had left to try and suck air into his lungs. He sensed Leon was playing with him since he could have snapped his neck, easily. Leon could see that Deckard was passing out, he released the pressure on his throat.

'Don't you pass out!' Leon said again. Or was it the same time? Moments - or eons - had passed. Deckard knew he was having his life throttled out of him. Just as with Zhora, Deckard could feel consciousness slipping away. That this would be his last sensations; being pummelled in a side-street off neon razzled Olmec, in the rain. Somewhere a long way away he heard an angry voice ask, 'What time is it?' and the far distant voice answered it's own question, 'It's time you died!'

In the dark of the poorly lit side-street from the same far-distance where the voice had come from he sensed an instant, or perhaps it was an eon, of bright light. He felt some vague revitalisation as something wet and warm splashed on his face. There was an indefinable, not very pleasant, smell that played somewhere in his fuddled mind. The grip he was held in, slackened. Deckard felt a great weight fall onto him and sensed it's very great bulk. He passed out.

When he came to, he sensed that he was lying in a street. It was raining heavily. There was a great weight on top of him. There was a strange smell, and something very warm and wet on his face. He was reviving. He tried to open his eyes but he was aware there was something 'slithery' on his face. He struggled to sense what it was, but now, even with his eyesight obscured, he now realised where he was. He was off 'Olmec', on one of the side-streets. He was being throttled by the Replicant Leon - except he wasn't being throttled any more.

One of his arms was trapped under the unknown weight, whatever that weight was, but he was able to reach up to his face with the other free hand and wipe his eyes. He turned his attention to the weight that was compressing him. What was it? There was a large head lying next to him. He could see the face. It looked like Leon Polokov. He tried to heave the weight off himself but he didn't have the strength. Instead he started to slide out from under the bulk of this Replicant. He could now see why the Replicant was lying, prone, on top of him. The entire left side of its head had been blown off. The jaw was hanging away, only held in place by tendons, and some superfine cabling, on the right-side of its head.

For the moment Deckard had more important things to achieve. Like, how to get back upright and onto his feet. He forced himself into a position on his hands and knees. This must be how it feels to be a toddler, when they're trying to start to walk, Deckard thought. Then he began to feel around his neck and along his windpipe.

He became aware of some natural strength come back to him - or was it the remains of the reviving effect of the Drizapone he had taken back in the dressing room at Exotica? He heaved himself up onto his knees. He looked down at his hands and saw they were smeared with blood. His own blood, or Leon's? He used the thumbs of both hands to clear the mess that was in his eyes. Then used the back of his hands to wipe his face. There was still fresh blood dripping from somewhere. He leant forward and could feel the blood pouring down his nose and saw it dripping onto the road.

He stayed in this kneeling position and rested back on his heels. But he couldn't perceive much beyond the circle of a few feet from where he was kneeling. He remained like this for what may have only been several minutes, but seemed, to him, to be a great length of time.

Suddenly, he was back in the moment. And the events came back to him in a clarifying flash. What he saw was his hands covered in blood and tissue. What he saw was, the holed body of Leo. What he saw was, a mass of blasted brain tissue and bone lying on the road surface near him. And there was also a very frightened woman, shaking, holding his own, modified, Razr hand-gun - directly at him. She was not only shaking, but the weight of the hand-gun with its augmented battery pack was causing it to shake even more in her hands. He saw the LED's blinking as the Razr swiftly recharged.

Everything had been strangely quiet. Then, in a moment, it seemed as though someone had switched the volume from 'mute' to 'full blast'. There was a scream from someone, somewhere. There were police sirens. He heard the rapid beeping of his Razr as it recharged back to full power, and then the steady single note indicating readiness. He felt around his throat again and then all around his head, to try and sense which bits hurt the most.

Eventually, he looked up from his kneeling position and looked steadily at the young woman holding his own hand-gun, it was the Replicant Rachael. His natural disposition, necessary for this line of work, reasserted itself. 'That's a big gun...,' he said sardonically, 'for a little lady.'

Rachael's arm dropped to her side and she let the gun drop from her grip. She looked down at the gun, horrified. Deckard could see tears running down her face. He tried to get to his feet but found that he still didn't have sufficient strength to get up.

'With shooting like that you could get a job as a blade runner,' he said. 'There's gonna be a vacancy. If I don't survive this assignment.'

Rachael put a hand over her face.

Deckard indicated to her, with a silent nod of the head, to pass him his gun. He saw her look up and down the length of the Avenue and down the side street.

'Don't try to run!' he said, 'If you wanted to shoot me with my own gun you should've done it straight away. One for Leon, then one for me.' He nodded silently at the gun again, 'It's better that you're not found with that anywhere near you. SFPD don't take prisoners.'

Rachael wiped tears away and, before more spilt down her face, she began to stoop to pick up the gun. She stopped, and seemed unable to take hold of the gun again. She kicked it over toward him.

'Besides,' Deckard continued. 'You're a public hero. You saved the life of an SFPD officer.' He nodded an instruction to her to get out of the road. 'Better stay out of the way when the patrol gets here.'

He realised he didn't have the strength to get up off his knees, so he picked up his hand-gun and dug his departmental badge out of his overcoat pocket. He rested back on his ankles and flipped his badge wallet open and held it up at shoulder height.

An SFPD patrol car stopped at the end of the street and a couple of patrol personnel got out, guns drawn and pointed. They shone torches down into the side street.

Chapter 13

Deckard arrived back from the hospital in a taxi, well past 3am. He'd been cleaned up - so he looked less like an extra out of an old 'slice-and-dice' horror film. Having been cleaned up, he had needed a mixture of stitches, flesh and skin welding, pain-killer and an anti-swelling drug, since there was a danger that the throttling strength that Leon had applied could cause the flesh and tissue of his neck to swell up so much that it would close-up his windpipe. He was going to be held for observation but he elected to discharge himself with a parting gift from the hospital of a dose of Axtradel. So he was feeling reasonably cheery when he arrived home.

As the taxi drove up to his apartment building, a woman got out of another taxi that was parked across from the gates. She was tall, had raven black hair in some old-fashioned style, she looked very pale, and she wore deep red lipstick. She stood by the taxi. His taxi stopped at the gate and he traced a line in the air with his finger, indicating to her to get into his taxi on the other side.

They rode up in the elevator, silently, to his floor. He ushered her into his apartment for the second time in a few hours. She was shaking badly. So much so that he felt he ought to hold her, to comfort her. She wore a fake-fur of some long extinct species, a sable with blue-grey flecking?

Deckard immediately went into the bathroom. He looked in the mirror on the side wall. At least Leon didn't ruin my good looks, he said to himself as he looked at the beaten, haggard image reflected back at him. He removed the blood drenched shirt he was still wearing. He kicked it into a heap under the sink. He checked the bruises and grazes and swellings from his two encounters that evening. And he felt the raw and tender bruising especially around his neck. He quickly wet his brow, Axtradel gives you the sweats, one of its known side-effects. When he came back out of the bathroom Rachael was leaning on the side table in the living room.

'You've got a bad case of the shakes,' Deckard said as he looked at her.

'What is it?' Rachael asked as she nearly sobbed and had to try hard not to.

'It's all part of the business, of keeping the Earth Replicant-free.'

'Your business, Mr Deckard. Not mine. None of this is any of my business. What's happening to me? Ever since your visit this morning - yesterday morning,' she corrected herself, 'I've been shaking. And when I've not been shaking, I've been crying. Now I'm shaking _and_ crying.'

The lights of a heli-car blasted through his apartment windows as it made a sharp turn. The lights glistened off the wetness on her face, off her tears. She sighed. She had a moment of realisation, as though it had just occurred to her at that moment. 'I am just a part of your brutal business. I'm part of what keeps you blade runners in business. Isn't that so?

Decker looked down, and said nothing.

'Why did I come here? Of all places, of all the people there are. Why did I come here?'

Because, of all the _people_ in the world, you probably know no one other than myself and Eldon Tyrell, Deckard thought but he did not want to state it so baldly to her; all the other people that you think you know are just imaginary memories. It occurred to him, as he watched her shaking so deeply, that The Tyrell Corporation had gone far beyond necessity in this type of Replicant. Who needs a Rep that gets the shakes? Off-world, you need them to be fearless. To do what fear prevents most people from doing. Off-world you need them to be better than your own self, and better than any human can be.

Deckard glanced across at Rachael again. It was clear she needed some respite.

'You need a drink,' he said.

'You said that last time I was here.'

'And now you really do, more than ever. Don't go running off like last time, the instant I turn my back.'

He stepped into the kitchen and rummaged through the cupboards for an extra glass, one that was clean. He poured a couple of neat shots into long test-tube styled glasses. Rachael removed the fake fur she was wearing and threw it over the E-Zee chair and came and stood in the kitchen doorway.

'What would happen if I just disappeared?' she asked. 'Where could I go? North? I'd be safe then, wouldn't I?'

Deckard looked at her standing in the harsh kitchen strip light, it made her look very different to the smooth young, assured, woman he had met the previous day. Now she was - anxiety heaped upon apprehension, and apprehension heaped upon fear. Her waterproof mascara was not proofed against all the tears she had cried. The foundation had been washed away. The lipstick, that had been so precisely applied, was now only a deep red blush around the corners of her mouth. The only part of her appearance that was the same was the old-fashioned hairstyle heaped high upon her head with the long fringe over her brow.

'Would you hunt me?' she gave a slight unhappy, unsmiling smile.

Deckard looked at her, then he slung back half of the contents of his glass, while she took a shallow sip from hers. She pulled a ghastly face.

'I can't drink it. It's disgusting.'

'It's 45% proof,' Deckard said, 'You're not used to it. I shouldn't have served it neat. Here, give it back to me.' She handed the glass back to him and he took a hi-ball glass off the draining board, hygenic-wiped it before he transfered the alcohol into it. He turned and looked in his refrigerator for ice.

'Something to sweeten it...,' he said absent-mindedly. He saw a box of ice cream sundaes in the freezer section so he put a couple of them in the glass. He held the glass over a low heat on the cooker to melt down the ice cream. As he did this, she watched him in silence, her eyes following every move his hands made, every move on his face.

'Please don't avoid my question.' There was a curious tone in her voice, more expressive than even the very sophisticated Replicants that he'd encountered before he had left blade running last time.

She asked him again, 'Would you? Hunt me?'

There was only one answer, bladerunner or not. Retired or not. And regardless of whether he had been re-engaged - press-ganged - as he called it.

'I owe you one,' he said.

She gave a very slight smile.

'Don't smile,' he said. 'I wouldn't come after you. But somebody would. Bryant wants you dead. You absconded. Maybe Tyrell wants it as well. You can always be replaced, he has the blueprints and proof of concept in his creation of... you. After you failed the test, I could see his mind working over how you would be improved in the next revision. When you are remade...'

The sundaes were half melted now. He added some ice cubes to the glass. He swilled the mix around, took a sip himself, approved his own improvised dessert-cocktail and handed it back to her. 'Try it.'

She took a sip, and then took a second sip. Then she drank deeply from the glass.

'That's much better. Thanks. I like it like this.'

'That's good,' he said.

'There are the free-states, in the north, aren't there?' Then she said, 'Besides, I didn't abscond, Mr Deckard. Eldon just wouldn't let me return to...'

''It doesn't matter, Rachael.' He realised that he had just addressed her by her first name for the first time. 'While you were living in the Tyrell building you were in a, legally, grey area. But now, for whatever reason that you are out here,' he indicated the entire world, with an expansive sweep of his arm, 'legally, its black and white. There is no recognition of the 'why' in your situation. That makes you a target for being retired, just like any other Replicant. It doesn't even matter that you're not an escapee. That you haven't killed to get here. You're targeted anyway.'

He walked through to the living-room and sat in the large E-Zee chair. She followed him.

'You've seen the files on me?' Rachael asked. 'The incept date. You know it?'

'They're... mmmmm.' The mixture of the Axtradel and the Tsing Tao were taking effect on him, and he was drifting off. The effect was being added to, for him, by the pain-killer he had been given back at the hospital. 'That information is... classified,' he lied. He was not in the mood or in the state of mind to get into a discussion with a Replicant about these things.

'But you're authorised to view the files aren't you?'

He drifted off momentarily, then started awake, 'Huh? What did you say?'

'You saw my files?'

'I saw your flies?' he queried. 'Oh yes, right. I mean no. No. I didn't...' Deckard was sliding off to sleep again.

'That test you applied on me,' she continued, Rachael leant forward and took the bottle out of Deckard's loosening grip, just as it seemed it was going to fall out of his hand. She put it on a low table.

'Huh? The test?' Deckard asked distantly.

Rachael had a second thought. She picked up the bottle of Tsing Tao again and poured a short measure into her glass and swilled it to mix it with the melted but still cool ice cream. She quickly took a couple of deep sips.

'Have you had to take the test?'

There was no answer. She took another sip from her glass and turned to face Deckard in his easy chair. He was lying almost flat across the chair with the glass of Tsing Tao resting on his belly. He was asleep.

These Replicants placed great importance on photographs. Unknown to anyone outside of the upper management cadre at Tyrell this new generation of Replicants held photographs as being, what were known as, 'induced memories' or 'implied memories'. Their implanted memories were specifically built around the 'proof' of the truth of their false 'past' which they held in the form of these photographs. It was a simple enough device, since nearly everyone has a collection of photographs.

These ephemeral objects that show a single moment, a millisecond of a person's life held, as some kind of odd consequence, a special importance for these particular Replicants. Being only a millisecond captured in each photograph, even a prolific recorder of their own lives, the average person could only hold, in total, a record of a few minutes of their entire lives in their pics. Yet they continued to act as momentos, remembrances, souvenirs of an evening, or days, months, even of entire years and decades of a persons life. As much as anything else that had been devised since.

These slivers of past moments held in the accumulation of these ephemeral objects, were of so much importance. Yet they can so easily go up in flame. Be lost, or deleted or be destroyed in so many ways.

And Deckard kept a collection of photographs, as almost all people do. He kept paper copies of his family going back several generations. As he slept, Rachael examined his collection of photographs on the music stand of the electro-grand. Then she sat on the piano-stool. She removed her jacket and loosened her hair out of its rigidly set styling. In the process she seemed to alter her appearance entirely. With her hair let down, it seemed to change the shape of her face, and her face seemed to shrink amongst the mass of curls that she released. Now, Rachael appeared less the streamlined sophisticate, more of an ingenue.

All the while she did this she read the sheet music set on the music stand. She laid her fingers on the keys and started to play. She played quietly for a long time, for several hours. Remembering Nocturnes and Preludes by Frederic Chopin, and more recent pieces by Axel Realspo, and slower pieces by Ludwig Beethoven. She started to play the slow second movement of his fifth piano concerto. Yet she was _certain_ , as certain as anyone could be, of learning to play this piece. She had liked it from the first time she had heard it, and had especially wanted to learn it. But the Tsing Tao sundae worked on her as alcohol is supposed to, and she drifted into sleep occasionally, still sitting upright at the piano, but she would wake again and continue to play where she had left off.

Eventually Deckard roused from his alcohol and Axtradel induced stupor, groaning as he did so. As he looked around the living room he saw a beautiful woman with a full head of dark curly hair that he didn't recognise. He wondered what she was doing in his apartment and how she had got there. She was sat at the mini-grand, the one family heirloom he had - that he could hardly play, but she was playing the piano, beautifully.

He watched her, listened to her play, occasionally drifting back to sleep. But memory of the previous day slammed back through the thinning cover of the fog he had got from the prescription drugs and the alcohol. He groaned in realisation at where he was. The situation that Bryant had got him into. Of the peculiar enigma of the Replicant, Rachael. He now, rousing to wakefulness, realised that she had altered her appearance and it was she who was sat playing at the electro-grand. He got out of the easy chair and sat down beside her on the piano-stool.

'You look different. Very different.'

'Eldon liked me to wear my hair that way. It occurred to me last night that I don't have to wear my hair like that any more. I don't have to do anything for Eldon any more.'

'That's right,' Deckard said. He added, 'You play beautifully,' while what he meant was "you look beautiful."

'I wasn't sure if I could play. I remember taking lessons but now I just don't know if its me or someone else. It might be Eldon's niece maybe, she plays beautifully. Or, maybe it was his mother, for all I know. But, as far as I am concerned, I _know_ I learnt this piece!'

Deckard turned his head to look at her in profile. She stopped playing and turned her face towards him. She looked steadily, unblinkingly, at him looking at her. They looked at each other for long moments. He gazed into her eyes, and they were beautiful eyes to gaze at. But why were they so beautiful?

At a moment like this Deckard was split between experiencing her beauty first-hand, and of observing himself observing her beauty. He was always querying the human habit of humano-morphism. The habit of expecting to comprehend another person through the tiny gestures that show on the face and in body language. So he watched her subtly changing expressions, as she looked back at him. Deckard was awed by the beauty of the woman - or rather, of this Replicant. He was awed by the beauty of the sculptured-culture, of the cultivation of a mass of living cells into - this living flesh. Yet deliberately formed into such beautiful shapes as this.

Was this really Tyrell's big idea? To get around the on-Earth illegality. Make them so beautiful that everyone would want to have one. Everyone is a sucker for a pretty face - even those that deny being swayed by such things - and would be glad to be suckers given half a chance to be suckered. It had taken generation upon generation of some grotesque failures. Leon was proof of that. Leon wasn't beautiful. It was just brutish. She turned her head away and started to play the piano again. The sad-eyed Replicant, Deckard thought. He wondered if it was the work of JF Sebastien, just known as 'Jif' in the business. As he looked at her profile, he noticed the straightness of the nose and the fine lines of the nostrils. It was a trademark of 'Jif' to make noses that looked like this.

He thought of how he imposed an arbitrary judgement on a person's appearance, on an entire person and their character, based on what were otherwise inconsequential shapes, the massing of muscle and cartilage and tissue and dermis sitting on top of bone. All the things that make a face. As a cop I could call my judgements irrelevant, but instead I call them hunches. Odder still, they were so often right. He shook his head as though he were shaking the accumulating thoughts out of his brain.

'What's wrong?' she asked.

He didn't answer, just continued to look at her. And she continued to look at him. Silently. He was looking for that deep red light in her retina. What was it? Enhanced vision, he assumed.

He leaned in to her and kissed the side of her face and on her ear lobe, he noticed that her flesh, her skin, felt perfectly human. The previous models had never got the touch sensation quite right. The muscle and tissue under the dermis never gave the flesh a true fleshly 'feel'. This one was perfectly real.

'Perfect,' he half-whispered under his breath. He drew his head back and she looked sidelong at him.

Chapter 14

Priscilla stayed overnight at JF Sebastien's apartment in Nuevo Frisco. In the morning his two friends, Kaiser Bill and Ready Eddie Teddy came into the room.

'Get up! Get up, sleepyhead! You'll be late!' they chorused. Pris threw back the bedclothes and sat up. Her breasts shuddered a little as she did so. Kaiser Bill's eyes popped.

'I'm not going in today fella's. I'm staying home. Go and get Little Suzy to make us breakfast.' He turned to Priscilla and asked her if coffee and toast would be alright, she nodded and JF passed on the order for breakfast.

'And get MacCauley to bring it here,' he called after them as they headed out the door.

So, they had breakfast in bed - like a real couple. An unusual experience for JF. When they had finished eating he turned to face her. They sat and looked silently at each other. His eyes darted around her face and body, remembering how she looked at this moment.

'Thanks for letting me stay JF,' she said. She kissed him. At first, in a sisterly way, then kissing in a more intense manner.

'You're not going are you?' he asked her.

'Not if you don't want me to. I like it here.' And she spread her arms across the sheets. 'It's better than the sidewalk. It's bigger than the sidewalk.' She giggled. 'I don't think I've ever lain in such a big, comfortable bed.'

'You're welcome to stay for a while.'

Priscilla smiled broadly.

About mid-day Jay got out of bed. He explained to Pris that he had to do a couple of hours work and send it off to Tyrell. So she lay in bed luxuriating in the soft bedding.

Later on, she picked the sheer transparent mesh dress off the bedroom floor. She carried it in her hand as she walked out of the bedroom. She wandered around the apartment, naked, until she found her way to the workroom where Jay was sat working. She leant into the room while she knocked on the door.

'Come on in,' Jay said without looking up. It was the largest room in this apartment. He was sat at a very large worktable. It was several tables pushed together. The tools of his trade, of the differing stages of his craft-science, were arrayed on each work-top.

JF was sat at one of the work-bays around the worktable and was leaning over as he worked at his task. She walked over to him, still naked, still carrying her mesh over-dress in her hand. He was clearly absorbed in what he was doing. She leant her bare thighs against his shoulder.

He looked up at her. Then looked up and down her body.

'I don't meet nearly enough women like you,' he said. She looked at him looking at her.

'Have you ever met anyone like me?' she asked.

'No,' he said shortly.

She moved her eyes to look at the task he was working on.

'Should I ask what you're doing? Would I understand what you said?'

'It'd take ages to explain,' he replied.

'Would you like to play, again? Soon.'

'Yes,' he said. 'But I can't right now. I have to get this done. Then I'll be free.'

'OK' she said casually. She stepped up onto 'points', like Nina the ballerina automata. She pirouetted a couple of times toward the door. He swivelled his chair and watched her. She shook out her mesh over-dress and slipped it over her head and pulled it down the length of her body, straightening it out, wiggling as she did so. She clasped both hands together in front of her. Then she bit her lip and curtsied, blew him a kiss, turned around and left the room.

JF turned back to his worktable. He felt an unknown kind of joy blossoming. He smiled.

She left the workroom and walked through the apartment to the hallway, expecting the others to arrive. She waited and waited. She sat down in a large E-Zee chair in the living room. Her condition slipped into neutral as she waited. When they didn't arrive, either alone or as a group, she got up and started to explore Jay's apartment more closely. She wandered around doing back flips as she went back through the rooms. She walked around and around, room to room, still waiting for the others to arrive. She looked at the large collection of artificials, the automata, the marionettes, and the animated mannequins. There were so many of them.

Among them were a trio of squat, rotund 'tumblers' that either capered about, falling over each other, or lounged in one of the easy chairs. There was a laughing policeman facing a chuckling Buddha. One laughed uproariously while the other gave a soft quiet laugh, each setting the other off. There was another ballerina, not Nina, this one was like those in a musical box, except she was half-life size. She spun on points then glided across the room with a chiming music projecting from somewhere inside her as she moved. But most of them were static, or didn't work, or were switched-off. There was a rotund pastry-chef that was made to look like it was made out of pastry. There was a jester, a harlequin and a minstrel with a mandolin all stood together. A unicorn. A Chinese mandarin. A couple of Pierrot. A dodo. There were a pair of girl twins, one was adjusting the pink ribbons in the others hair when they had stopped. Two porters carrying a sedan chair were stopped in mid-stride. Inside the sedan was an oversized doll version of an eighteenth century Lady riding in it. There was a half-sized giraffe that had sprouted wings, and it wore a top hat, an extravagant neck-lace and a feather boa. Don Quixote stood silently with shield and a broken lance. JF Sebastien's jacket was hanging from the lance. Sancho Panza sat at his feet, his teeth sunk into a bread-roll. There was even a cherub hanging from the ceiling on baby-blue coloured ribbons, just above head height. It spun slowly one way, then back the other. Occasionally it would go through the motion of reaching over its shoulder and firing an arrow from an otherwise empty quiver.

Priscilla stopped at each of these 'friends' that JF had made, or had acquired. When she stood and looked at the cherub she noticed that there were a few small arrows scattered across the parquet floors that were nearly worn right through, in places, to the original floorboards. She picked an arrow up and stood on a chair underneath the cherub and dropped the arrow into the quiver. At first nothing happened. She stood waiting. She slipped into a neutral state. Then, after a while, the cherub reached over to the quiver. The sense of movement caused Pris to 'wake' to alertness again. The cherub picked the arrow, put it into the bow, drew back the bow and fired. The arrow hit the wall and bounced off. Priscilla didn't smile. She looked quizzical for a moment, and turned away.

In a corner at the far end of the room there was a small crowd of more, static, figures gathered in a semi-circle. They were dressed up as though they were at a party and were set up to look like a group of people chatting. Each of them had an empty glass of wine in their hands. One was holding the bottle. One had his head thrown back in mid-laugh. She touched their skin. Although it was cold to the touch she felt the natural 'give' of flesh. She was looking at each of them in turn when she saw that one of them was Zhora and another was Rye, smiling at each other. Rye looked odd. His face was coloured slightly differently on either half and he had a red blotch over his left eye. An ace of clubs playing card was stuck on his forehead. His hair had two broad shaved bands from both temples to the back of his head.

Then she found herself looking at - herself. It was her face, her figure. Just like looking in a mirror. The skin was entirely colourless though and here was a large blot of paint that had been carelessly slapped across her eyes. It looked just like her. Except for the hair, which was styled differently. And she had no ears. Otherwise it was her.

She heard footsteps marching in unison. She took the glass out of Zhora's hand, stood still, and adopted a frozen smile. Kaiser Bill and Ready-Eddie Teddy strode into the room.

'Priscilla ,' said Ready-Eddie Teddy. They marched down towards the end of the room.

'Priscilla ,' said Kaiser Bill. 'Come out, come out. Wherever you are. Come out to play.'

They looked around the group of figures that Priscilla stood amongst. Then they wheeled around and started to march away back down the length of the room. As they passed out of the tall doors, Priscilla ran very quietly along the room after them. After they left the room she stood in the open doorway, she hiked her mesh dress up over her hips and held her hands up, crucifixion-like, across the gap between the open double-doors.

'Hello fella's,' she announced herself.

Ready-Eddie Teddy and the Kaiser turned to face her. Kaiser Bill's eyes bulged and he gulped deeply. The end of his long Pinocchio nose lengthened and went red.

'Were you looking for me?' They both nodded silently. 'Want to play?' she asked.

They both shook their heads silently. 'You don't want to play? Why'd you say "Come out to play?" then.' Kaiser Bill held a hand over his ever lengthening nose. 'J-J-JF has finished what he was doing,' he stuttered.

'OK,' she said cheerily. She drew her dress back down over her hips again and walked to the workroom.

JF was still sat at his worktable, except he had moved along a couple to one of the bio-organic chemistry worktables. He sat with his eyes closed. He needed to rest his eyes, or to catch up on the sleep he had lost last night.

There was a microscope set-up on the worktable. Priscilla leaned over and looked down the lens. He sensed her perfume and opened his eyes. He looked at the way her breasts pushed against the thin material and how flat her stomach was when she bent over.

'Hi,' he said.

Priscilla gave an embarrassed look and said, 'You caught me having a little peek.' She smiled, 'What is it?' She indicated the microscope.

'Some work I'm doing for Tyrell. They have a problem with their latest models. The brain chemistry. They do their own brainwork. But they've asked me if I have any ideas.'

'Did you make all of them?' Pris asked, pointing limply at the other rooms with their animated mannequins.

'Most of them. Some I've bought because I admire the work in them. Or because they're antiques. I've got pieces here that are over two-hundred years old. Among the very first that were ever produced. Look at that one there.' He pointed to a small figure sitting on the rococo-copy mantelpiece around an unused, blocked-up fireplace. She took a step towards it - and then she spun around the rest of the way - to look at it.

'What is it,' she asked. It was a monkey with a bowed head wearing a fez and holding a pair of cymbals. It had a drum strapped on its back.

'You don't know what it is?'

'I've never seen anything like it.'

'It's a monkey.'

'Oh,' she said dully, uncomprehending, uninterested. 'Does it move, like the others, or do anything at all?'

'It used to be clockwork but now I just have to do this ...' JF clapped his hands twice, sharply. It's head immediately jerked up and it started to clash the cymbals together and one wagging leg caused the drum to bang while it's tail swung around.

'It always makes me laugh,' Jay said. He started laughing. Priscilla watched JF's reaction then she and gave a delighted shriek and laughed too.

'That's over two-hundred years old. It's something called clock-work. It still has all the original clockwork gears. I had to clean them up and get all the rust off. Then I had to make some replacement ones, then I put a little electrical motor in it.'

'I like it,' she said.

'As for all the others in the other room. Most of them work too. I switch all of them on when the Holidays come around. But if I had them switched on all the time it would be too busy. They'd be no peace.'

The monkey stopped playing.

'It's stopped JF,' she said. He got up out of his chair and walked over to the mantelpiece. Just so he could be standing close to her. He picked it up and handed it to her.

'See that key sticking out of its back? Turn it around, anti-clockwise.'

'Huh?'

'Turn it to the left.'

She turned it once. Nothing happened. She looked queryingly at JF.

'Turn it a few more times,' he said. She did so.

'Now sit it on the mantelpiece.'

It started to play again, and Priscilla laughed at it again. JF joined in and they stood laughing at the antique toy that no one had probably laughed at for most of its two-hundred years. They laughed and smiled at each other until the clockwork wound down again. She looked at him.

'They run down after a while,' he said. 'That's what clockwork does. Clockwork runs down and stops.' He went back over to the work-bench and sat down. Priscilla turned the key and made it start playing again. She followed him over to the workbenches, holding the clockwork monkey, and leant her thighs against the table of the first of the bio-organic design bays and picked up one of the airbrushes that Jay used in his design work.

'Is this paint, or ink?' she asked him.

'Neither,' JF said, 'It's a skin growth accelerator. I spray it onto a bio-organic maquette. By building it up layer by layer it allows a growth of the dermis...'

Priscilla didn't really hear him, she stood vacantly, barely listening. All she wanted was him to stop talking so she could say. 'I don't want this. All I want is something to try, a new kind of make-up. Do you have paint or ink?'

'You need pigment,' JF said. 'Go round to the third workbay on the other side.'

Priscilla walked around to the other worktable. She sat down and rooted around amongst the pigments, picked up a brush and made a slashing stroke with it across each eye in turn, in a glossy black. She used her fingers to 'blend' and fudge the edges, and dabbed away some excess in her eye sockets. Then she stood up and pirouetted on the spot.

'What do you think?' she asked.

'That looks good,' he said.

'Good? Is that all?'

'Well,' he paused and corrected himself, 'you look beautiful.'

She smiled. 'Every girl wants to hear that,' she said in a coquettish manner. She used her fingers to hold her hair up on the top of her head. With her un-made-up face and the dark glossy slash across her eyes, she looked like a rough sketch of a monochrome geisha. An unusually blond geisha.

'Hold that right there!' JF said urgently. 'That's beautiful!'

'Do you think so?' she smiled. She let her hair down. He was rummaging around on his desk. He picked up his drawing slab.

'No! No! Hold it just like you had it. With your hair up.'

She grabbed her hair again and held it up. 'Like this?'

'Like that. That's it!' He started to sketch quickly, checking her again and again. In a minute he had finished. He set the slab back down on the worktable.

'Can I look?'

'Sure.'

She ran around the worktables and looked at the sketch. He had accentuated all her features until they were all longer and sleeker. 'That's me? That's what you see when you see me? That's beautiful,' she said. 'Perfect.'

JF resumed talking about his work specialisation and recreation. 'There's more Replicants on Earth than you might imagine,' Jay said. 'The work I do, and a company like Tyrell does, it's too good to be squandered toiling on some meteor-station or a new town on a moon off Jupiter.' He stopped. 'Come here,' he said. She walked over to where he sat.

He held Priscilla's hands, not looking at her, 'You're too good for that,' he said, allowing himself to be overcome and fooled by his own craft.

'You know, then.' Priscilla said simply.

JF Sebastien nodded his head. He just wanted to look at Priscilla , just for her beauty. And to hold her. He looked up at her suddenly. Priscilla looked blank.

'Sorry. I'm boring you. There aren't many people who understand the simplicities of this design work. They get all bound-up in the complexities. And they certainly can't understand the complexities of it, so they can't understand the simplicities.'

JF didn't understand that she had slipped temporarily into a 'rest' mode - which was the source of these Replicants neutral, and strangely malign, expressionlessness. JF Sebastien had never spent much time around the commercial Replicants that he designed once the file had been sent to the company for construction. He preferred to make his own 'retro' styled models.

Priscilla suddenly smiled brightly at him, 'No, you're not boring. But you're right, I don't really understand all the technical stuff.'

JF loved the look of her smile. He smiled back.

She walked down to the bottom of the room to look at the figure in the last bio-organic work-bay. Out of nowhere she asked, 'Where's Roy?'

'Who's Roy?'

'Oh. A friend,' she said absently. 'You have a model of me. I found it. Where is Roy?'

'I model them. I don't give them names or anything. I never see them after I deliver the file. Tyrol does all the work after I've done this. Do you have a photo? Better still, just keep looking. If I designed him, he's bound to be around. Maybe he wandered off into another room before I switched it off.'

'Can you do that even to a...?'

'Oh yeah,' he interrupted. 'Sure.'

Silence.

'Why do you live here? Alone. Is it because...'

'Because I like it just like this.' He looked embarrassed and was looking down at the work-top, not wishing to meet her eye.

Priscilla stepped behind him and leaned in again, examining him closely from behind. She looked at the deep wrinkles on his face and how they were accentuated even more by the bright white light from the light box on the work-top.

'I like to be around people,' she said. It was one of the first expressions that the old, old original models would say to their new owners on being activated. 'I can't figure how old you are,' she suddenly said.

'It's a problem with my cells,' he said. 'Every cell in the body has some kind of time-keeping in it, like old-fashioned clockwork. My cells are set to the wrong time-keeping. I'm aging nearly twice as fast as I ought to, twice as fast as everyone else. I'm like someone aged over fifty but I probably won't live beyond forty. I'm a bit like the clockwork toys. I'm running down, fast.'

'How old are you really?

'Twenty-six.'

Priscilla looked puzzled, as though trying to reconcile incompatible data. 'You really do look a lot older,' she said.

'You mean, as in more distinguished?' he asked hopefully. She didn't say anything but she arranged a face of sympathetic understanding. She leant over him and asked, 'So you can't get off-Earth, is that right?'

'Yeah.'

'It's not all it's cracked up to be,' she said flatly. 'So, you can't pass the test?'

'I'd pass the test alright,' he said, he was momentarily indignant.

'I'm sorry,' Priscilla said.

'It's alright,' he replied, 'you couldn't know. You're so perfect. It's the medical I can't pass. Everyone has to justify the resources they're using off-Earth... the oxygen.' He glanced up into her face, then downward at the way her nipples pushed the mesh dress outward. Priscilla smiled awkwardly. She stood up straight as though she had not noticed him looking at her, so that JF was looking directly at the triangle of pubic hair through the semi-transparent material.

'Besides, I like it here on Earth,' he turned and rubbed the shoulder of Kaiser Bill. She turned and went and sat in the chair at the next worktable. This time JF looked at the roundness of her hips and thighs, and how her buttocks moved.

'But surely they'd make an exception,' she continued, 'Because you're so clever.'

JF Sebastien gave a sad, resigned smile. 'They do. Usually. But not for me.'

Priscilla looked puzzled again. She bent her head forward, her thick fringed hair cast a shadow over her eyes. The dark red light glowed dimly, deep in her retina's.

'Well. I've decided,' she said, 'I like you just as you are.'

JF looked embarrassed. She got back out of the chair, faced him, and flipped up into a handstand and walked away on her hands for a dozen paces and dropped back onto her feet. He watched her the whole time, she turned back to face him. Suddenly her attention was on something behind his chair. She looked over his head.

'Hi Roy,' she said brightly.

'Hello,' said the large man that JF Sebastien saw as he swivelled his chair round.

'This was the friend I told you about, the one I came to meet in Nuevo.' Then she addressed Roy Byron, over Jay's head. 'This is my saviour, Roy, JF Sebastien. Without him I'd have been sleeping in the rubbish on the sidewalk. And who knows what terrible thing might've happened to me around here in this neighbourhood?'

JF looked at this silently-arrived stranger and was immediately intimidated by his physical presence, by his height and breadth. But also his appearance, his blond cropped hair, his crystal blue eyes. He sensed his swagger in his stance alone; in it he saw all the cruelties of the boys that tormented him during his schooldays.

'Thank-you for saving my friend, JF,' Roy said, then he looked sideways at Priscilla. She turned her gaze on him and they looked at each other for long moments. JF watched them looking at each other, as they both took a few slow paces toward each other. They nuzzled their necks together, like animals do. Roy turned Priscilla around then he turned her head back towards him and then they kissed deeply for a long time, and bit each others lips. Roy repositioned himself and held Priscilla by the hips til they were now facing each other and then kissed and bit each others lips again. All the while Roy alternately stroked and kneaded and mauled Priscilla's buttocks with his hands.

They disengaged. Now they leant their foreheads together, their eyes close to each other and gazed into each others eyes.

JF watched them.

'Have you eaten?' he asked generally. 'I'll get Little Suzy to bring you something.' He walked briskly toward the door.

'Little Suzy? Priscilla said you lived here alone,' Roy asked to JF's retreating back.

'He has made-up friends,' Priscilla said condescendingly to Roy.

'No,' JF Sebastien said with some defiance. He just managed to say, 'I have all these friends. I'm making new friends all the time.'

Roy looked over his shoulder as JF left the room and turned back to look at Priscilla.

'He's a funny little man,' said Priscilla.

'You like him?'

Pris answered silently by shooting a look that said, "As if..." 'Whatever has to be done, right?' she added in words.

'Well?' Roy asked.

'It worked. We're in, I'm sure of it,' she said. 'I've made sure he's gotta be grateful and do whatever you ask.'

They kissed deeply and animalistically again. They ceased kissing and Priscilla looked expectantly toward the doorway. 'Where is everyone else...?' Pris asked.

'Leon and Zhora...? They're...' Roy faltered.

'What is it Roy? Where are they?'

'When I was on Olmec Avenue... the place was full of cops. There'd been a couple of shootings before our rendezvous time. I was delayed, I was supposed to m-meet up with Zhora at Exotica. When they didn't show up I asked around, and found that some bastard bladerunner got them both.' He stopped to let Porsche absorb the information. It's us two now. That's all.'

'If they got Zhora, then we're all still too stupid. We'll get killed like all the others. I thought we might survive, or some of us might survive, this time,' Pris said flatly.

Roy didn't want to see her resign herself. He held her arms and stroked them. She looked up at him. He smiled a crooked, optimistic smile.

JF Sebastien had given an order for a meal to MacCauley then he had left the apartment. To him, not having Priscilla to himself, all of a sudden, the huge apartment felt over-crowded. He drove around Nuevo alone and sullen.

While he was away - wherever he was - Roy Byron walked around the apartment, just as Priscilla had done, looking at the automata figures, looking at the model work for the earlier Replicants. His own and Priscillas distant, and not so distant, cousins. Everything in the apartment was dowdy and worn and old and decaying, or everything had been improved by the patina of age; it depended on how you wanted to look at it. Roy was walking back to one of the living rooms when he heard an unfamiliar voice.

'Dinner is ready.'

He saw the wooden-headed butler, MacCauley, walk into the dining-room carrying a tray full of food. Roy picked a cherry tomato out of a dish as he passed. In the living-room Priscilla sat in a winged-back chair. She had put her dress back on. As she sat in the chair she was drawing on her stockings and tying blue ribbons around the tops.

'Thought I'd better dress for dinner!' she laughed, she left one leg casually swinging over the arm of the chair. Roy walked over to her and they kissed again in the same animalistic manner as before. He sat down in the chair alongside her and positioned her up into his lap.

JF Sebastien came back to the apartment and walked into the living-room and looked at them together. 'Come on then. Let's eat,' he said. 'MacCauley's laid our places.'

Thunder rolled along the bay, with that peculiar sonic effect as it echoed and re-echoed off the surrounding hills and within the dense clouds.

Roy suddenly got up, but not to go through to the dining-room. JF watched him. He stepped over to a chess-board that was set-up mid-game on a low table. He moved a white chess-piece.

'No,' JF said, 'Can't do that. If you do then Knight will take the Queen. See?'

Roy stepped around the low table and examined the positions on the board from the opponents point-of-view more closely.

'If you live alone,' he said, looking at JF, 'who are you playing against?'

'Confidential information,' JF said.

'Oh?' Roy said. He was considering a move and was about to pick up a piece when, without looking up or looking in the direction of JF Sebastien, he asked, 'You're staring?'

'You are just so different, I can't help it. You're just so perfect.' JF caught Priscilla's eye and smiled.

'Perfect?' Roy asked. 'Should we thank you?' Then he added under his breath, 'Well, almost perfect. But not quite perfect enough.'

'Which generation are you?' JF asked.

'He knows,' Priscilla said to Roy.

'I figured that,' he said to Pris, then to JF Sebastien he answered, 'We're both the Sixth generation.' Roy looked across at JF with a quizzical expression, 'How do you know? If we're perfect, how could you tell?'

'I just knew. You really are perfect, the only reason I can tell is because I know the work. I did a lot of the foundation designing for the Tyrell Corporation. There's a bit of me in you y'know.'

'Oh yes?' said Roy facetiously. Roy and Priscilla shot a glance at each other. Roy walked over to Priscilla. 'Is that why we are still so limited?' he said to her under his breath as he began to sit down beside her again in the wing-back. She giggled as she adjusted her position and parted her legs so that he sat inbetween them. She drew her legs up around his waist and held him there.

'We've been meaning to ask you about that,' Priscilla said.

JF Sebastien looked at her quizzically. He had an awareness of where this conversation was leading, something he suspected and dreaded. He quickly changed the subject.

'What can you do?' he asked.

'Do? "What can we do?"' Roy mimicked JF's question and JF smiled awkwardly. 'We're not like some ordinary machine. You ought to know better than that, Jif.' Roy said with an undertone of malice. He pinched a chunk of skin on his forearm, 'this is living tissue.'

Priscilla uncoiled herself from around Roy, and stood next to JF. She stooped and adjusted her stockings, pulling them up and tightening the ribbons around the tops. She leaned against JF, then casually slipped an arm around his neck, letting it swing limply at the elbow from his shoulder.

'I think, therefore I am,' she said and giggled. 'Thought made me, and thinking makes me who I am...'

'That's right Pris. Or should that be, "I am, therefore I think?"' Roy and Priscilla smiled at each other, as though they were sharing a private joke.

'No,' replied Pris, as though this was another practiced, possibly sarcastic, routine, mimicing human pihilosophy, ' Shouldn't it be "I think, therefore I _think_ I am!".'

They laughed.

'Now show him,' Roy said to Priscilla.

'Let's eat,' she said, 'and I'll show you something.' She turned around, flung both arms in the air, bent her back, slammed her hands on the floor behind and kicked one of her legs up and then the other, then did another couple of backflips toward the door. JF stood and watched.

'Well. Come on JF.' She held her hand out to him for him to hold. He followed, but before he could take hold of her hand, she did another backflip and then a couple of swift cartwheels and she was at the dining-room doorway.

JF Sebastien followed quickly after her. When he got to the door, Priscilla was standing over a tall container of water used for boiling eggs. He walked into the room and as he did so, Priscilla held out her hand, to indicate 'Stop!'. She then put her other hand and forearm into the boiling water and drew out an egg. She clasped her hand around the boiled egg and held it tightly for a few seconds. Then she threw the egg over at Jay, who was still standing by the door. He caught it, but it was so hot that he immediately had to drop it.

'The re-engineered and toughened cell structure means that neither my skin nor flesh will burn or blister.' Pris said. 'Your work, JF?'

'That's right, I did that. I've never seen it in action though. I don't really involve myself in the...' He struggled for another word, other than manufacture, or construction. He couldn't think of one so he started another sentence instead. 'Doctor Tyrell just gave me the specifications of what was needed. That's all.'

Roy had sauntered into the dining-room behind JF. He closed the double doors as he did so.

'It seems that we, each of us in this room, have a similar problem.' Roy said.

'Oh?' JF tried to sound casual, unknowing.

'We're running down. Just like the clockwork monkey.' Priscilla added.

Premature aging,' said Roy.

'Decrepitude too,' Priscilla added. She looked over at Roy and added, 'JF has something like it too. And he designed us with it.'

JF felt a profound unease deep in his stomach. 'No. That isn't what you've got,' he said.

'It's just like it though, isn't it.' Priscilla said.

JF Sebastien tried to evade the trajectory that was developing in their conversation. He lied. 'You're talking about bio-mechanics. I'm a genetic designer, bio-mechanics is something else. It's another department.'

'And you don't know that much about the bio-mechanics?' Roy said sarcastically. 'Then how did you design us?'

'No. You don't understand. You have a terminating gene built-in. It halts cellular regeneration. That is nothing to do with me.'

Roy grabbed him by the straps on his work overalls. He pulled his face in close to his. Roy half-spoke, half-snarled, 'We need help. Without it Priscilla won't last much longer. We need _your_ help. We need to find out how we, you and I, can help Priscilla. You understand?'

'It's Doctor Tyrell that started the whole business.'

'Maybe he could help,' Royce said in a facile manner.

'I could mention it to him,' JF said. 'But you have to understand, he was required to build-in the t-t-terminating gene. It's required by the International Robotics Commission. It's their d-directive. We designers have no choice. Even Doctor Tyrell doesn't have the influence to change it. You are allowed to exist only while that proviso is in place. Otherwise, we humans would never have accepted you. I love designing Reps, but many see you as our replacements, hence the built-in limits. Your generation were given memories to overcome an even bigger problem, but you were never supposed to gain consciousness. That is the root of the brain chemistry problem that we're still trying to figure out.'

'Tyrell's a genius,' Roy said, still holding onto JF Sebastien's work overall straps. 'Or so they say.'

'Doctor Tyrell? He _is_ a genius.'

Pris was about to say something but Roy held up a finger to shush her and said instead, 'Yet he's very difficult to get to meet.'

'Yes.' JF said plainly. He felt his stomach lurch, knowing what Roy would say next.

'It is very nice that you are willing to offer to mention it to him. But _I_ need to speak to him directly. To thrash out a few design problems with him.' Roy gave a quick wink. Pris smiled. 'You've already said that you want to help Priscilla, and since he's such a hard man to get to see you will have to help me to meet him.' Roy Byron started to gently prod at Jay's chest. 'Yes?'

Priscilla had moved over to the dining table. She sat on the edge of the table and was picking, the nearly impossible-to-get delicacy, cherry tomatoes, off a plate. Roy manoeuvred Jay steadily backwards and steered him into a position between Priscilla's parted legs. She closed her legs firmly around his body drawing her legs up around his ribcage, applying pressure steadily and firmly.

'You will help us?' Roy stated, rather than asked.

'I can't,' JF said timorously. 'I really would like to, I just can't.'

'I _need_ you to help, you'll do that for me JF? 'Mmmm?' Pris asked.

'Will you help Pris?' Roy insisted. 'She needs you.'

JF started to struggle for breath. 'You're crushing me,' he protested.

Priscilla had slid an arm around his shoulder, and whispered to him, 'We just want you to help us. That's all JF. And you want to help us, don't you?' She held her arm so that it lay limply against his chest and rubbed it, gently, caressingly. 'I'm sure you can help me. Is there another human in the world who could help the way you could?' Priscilla continued applying the pressure while talking in a soothing, hypnotic manner. And applying the physical pressure as she tightened her grip with her legs.

'I really _do_ want to help,' JF said finally.

'But how?' Roy asked.

'It's just that he's so difficult to get to see. That's all.'

Priscilla moved her caressing arm up around his throat and started to slowly apply pressure to his windpipe. 'Roy is a great persuader. Aren't you?' she said.

Roy looked intensely and malevolently at JF but said nothing. Then his face widened into a supercilious smile and he slowly nodded.

'You say you want to help.' Priscilla continued, 'But _how_ will you help? Roy _has_ to see Doctor Tyrell. And it has to be soon. Without that, _I_ won't be able to live.'

'I can get you into The Corporation,' JF Sebastien blurted out, breathlessly.

'What was that?' Priscilla asked. She released some of the pressure around his throat but maintained the weight on his lungs.

'We have people inside Tyrell Corporation already,' said Roy. 'It hasn't helped. It must be _Doctor_ Eldon Tyrell.'

JF Sebastien nodded his head. 'I can get you in to see Eldon Tyrell.' Then, with desperation, he added, 'Please. Let - me - breathe!'

'There!' Priscilla said. She released her legs from around his rib-cage. She kissed him, briefly, on his cheek. Then she moved one leg down so that the inside of her calf was over his groin and she rubbed her leg back and forth. 'That wasn't too hard, was it?'

JF started to snivel.

Priscilla picked up the dish of cherry tomatoes and started to pick them off the plate and eat them until they were all gone.

Having agreed, JF wanted to put it off until tomorrow, or never.

'It's urgent, Jif,' Roy said. 'Can't you see that Priscilla is dying as we speak?'

JF looked at her. She didn't look like she was dying.

'A month ago Priscilla could've killed you,' Roy continued, 'just snapped your neck. Now she has to apply slow steady pressure. Besides, she likes you, a lot.' Priscilla put down the dish and stepped behind JF and put an arm around his shoulder again.

'We need to go today. Now.' Roy said, and slapped Jay across the face, impressing the urgency.

'But he'll be going to bed.'

'It's not even nine o'clock.'

'Genius needs its rest! Their minds work more.'

'You didn't need too much sleep last night. And you're a genius.' Priscilla said.

'No. I'm clever, but Doctor Tyrell is a real genius.'

'Then you will have to impress the urgency on him.' Roy held him by the straps on his overalls again. 'After all. He won't want to see me.'

'I'm winding down, JF. Like the monkey with the cymbals.' Priscilla said.


End file.
